With artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly transforming industry and communities, and federal lawmaking trailing behind technological advancements, state policymakers have kicked into high gear. At Consumer Reports (CR), state-level AI legislation has been an area of focus over the past year, and remains a focus advancing into the 2025 state legislative sessions. It is important that these policy efforts set ethical guidelines and technical safeguards to ensure AI systems are fair, safe, and transparent.
States taking the lead in tech policy isn’t a new phenomenon. For example, data privacy legislation–which aims to protect individuals’ personal information online–has seen notable successes at the state level over the past decade. CR has had a history of effectively advocating for improvements in these state-level privacy laws. In recent years, CR has also championed improvements to multiple artificial intelligence-focused bills. One of these, Senate Bill 205 (SB 205) in Colorado, was signed into law. SB 205 is a first-in-the-nation AI bias law, imposing requirements on deployers and developers of automated decision making systems.
I joined CR as a summer fellow via Stanford’s Tech Ethics and Policy Fellowship Program to work at the intersection of responsible AI deployment and AI policy. My work exploring generative AI through the creation of AskCR, which will be described in greater detail in a future blog post, was informed by some of the amazing work I got to do with CR advocacy team. I was able to work with the advocacy team on providing a clear state of play around artificial intelligence policy at the state level. Collaborating closely with colleagues across CR, I created a state-level artificial intelligence legislation tracker. The tracker includes all of the bills focused on AI that were considered at the state level in 2024 and categorizes them by their main focus. The tracker also includes analysis of high-level themes and trends that I observed throughout the process. I hope this tracker will serve as a valuable resource for both CR and the broader community, offering insights and fostering informed discussions to drive forward effective AI policy.
